California

Showing how no left-wing effort to raise taxes is too silly or embarrassing for ABC News to embrace, World News on Wednesday night jumped to promote a Web video, created by a group founded by a former Howard Dean operative and “featured contributor” to the Huffington Post (Rick Jacobs), to impose a higher state income tax rate on Californians earning over $1 million.   “First it was Warren…

Saturday's NBC Nightly News hyped a poll finding that 64 percent of Californians would be willing to pay more taxes "if the money went to public schools." (Video below) Substitute anchor Kate Snow included a plug for the report in the opening teaser: "Tax hike. Why people in one state are saying 'Bring it on.' Tonight, why they're willing to pay more."

Bradley Fikes at the North County Times, whose coverage area is mostly the northern portion of San Diego County in California, appears to have broken a quite significant story last Thursday when he reported that cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut of Dolly the sheep fame (4,250 stories from 1996-2003 were found in the Google New archive) urged stem cell scientists, as Fikes headlined, to "shift away…

The Los Angeles Times reports "Police are searching for a man who tried to knock down a Ronald Reagan statue Sunday morning. Newport Beach Police received a call about 5:30 a.m. Sunday of a vandalism in progress at Bonita Canyon Sports Park on Bonita Canyon Drive. A witness said a man in dark clothes tried to attach a chain to the base of the statue. The chain was connected to the back of his…

The New York Times’s coverage of the left-anarchist Occupy movement has been very favorable, pushing the group’s vague aims of “fighting economic inequality” while downplaying the anti-Semitism, violence, vandalism, and general squalor of the leftist campouts. Now that undeniable violence has broken out at an Occupy Oakland protest that blocked the city port and halted commerce, how will the…

The thrust of the New York Times’s coverage of the violence in Oakland begs the question: When even the left-wing magazine Mother Jones reports of police in Oakland being assaulted with eggs, glass, and vinegar, what is the “objective” Times excuse for virtually ignoring the protester violence? Yet Jesse McKinley and Malia Wollan’s report from the “Occupy Oakland” protests Friday focused not…

Political dissent on campus – acceptable when it involves left-wing protesters shouting down conservative speakers, but hurtful and possibly dangerous when performed in a peaceful, parodic nature by conservatives. That’s the impression left by the New York Times. Malia Wollan visited the campus of the University of California at Berkeley for Tuesday’s report, “A ‘Diversity Bake Sale’…

Green Vehicles is no more. The world will somehow have to get by without the lovely vehicle pictured after the jump populating our streets and highways. Given that its owner put an "I've giving it up" blog post last Tuesday, and even though Drudge just caught it a few hours ago, it's pretty safe to assume that the Green Vehicles debacle won't be a national establishment press story. It is,…

The video-game industry has won again in court, insisting on their right to make the most debased gaming experience imaginable and market it to children with little commercial restraint. On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against California’s law mandating that children are not allowed to purchase “Mature” video games without a parent.  The political elites are celebrating the…

Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland, CA has joined the chorus of those wishing to mainstream “gender-bending” by enacting a program this week that, according to a press release, tells kindergarteners “there are more than two genders.” The kindergarten through fifth grade school hosted a 2-day program for students titled, “Gender Spectrum Diversity Training,” in which single-sex…

Quirky liberal California Gov. Jerry Brown (elected to the post for the second time) was glorified in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine story by reporter Adam Nagourney in "Jerry Brown’s Last Stand." Brown proceeded to answer the reporters’ questions with a display of self-confident humor and a command of facts, history and language that befits a man in the eighth decade of his life, as he…

This White House faced strikingly little press criticism during the 2008 presidential campaign and through most of its first two years in office. So seldom is this White House meaningfully criticized in fact, that even the most mild jab apparently inspires backlash against the press. Just last week it was revealed that a San Francisco Chronicle reporter was booted from the White House press…

L.A.- based Adam Nagourney covered California’s budget impasse for Thursday’s edition, “Standoff in Sacramento as Brown and G.O.P. Lock Horns Over Taxes.” New Gov. Jerry Brown wants to put tax hikes in front of the voters through California’s initiative and referendum process. While the paper’s previous California budget writer Jennifer Steinhauer showed her displeasure with direct democracy…

New York Times reporter Jennifer Medina’s Sunday story from Sacramento focused on the state’s cute political couple, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his young budget director Ana Matosantos: “Political Odd Couple, United by Crisis In California Budget.” They are a constant if unlikely pair these days: the oldest man elected governor of California and the woman who is its youngest budget…